In another of Shakespeare's earliest works, which
might almost be described as a lyrical farce, rhyme plays also a great
part; but the finest passage, the real crown and flower of _Love's
Labour's Lost_, is the praise or apology of love spoken by Biron in blank
verse. This is worthy of Marlowe for dignity and sweetness, but has also
the grace of a light and radiant fancy enamoured of itself, begotten
between thought and mirth, a child-god with grave lips and laughing eyes,
whose inspiration is nothing akin to Marlowe's. In this as in the
overture of the play and in its closing scene, but especially in the
noble passage which winds up for a year the courtship of Biron and
Rosaline, the spirit which informs the speech of the poet is finer of
touch and deeper of tone than in the sweetest of the serious interludes
of the _Comedy of Errors_. The play is in the main a yet lighter thing,
and more wayward and capricious in build, more formless and fantastic in
plot, more incomposite altogether than that first heir of Shakespeare's
comic invention, which on its own ground is perfect in its consistency,
blameless in composition and coherence; while in _Love's Labour's Lost_
the fancy for the most part runs wild as the wind, and the structure of
the story is as that of a house of clouds which the wind builds and
unbuilds at pleasure.
Pages:
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59